A Year Of Sex Fantasy Tales

- Hi María. Would you like some coffee?

- Better orange juice if you have it, Auntie. My throat's dry.

After a quiet breakfast, the two girls went to sleep and Eva returned to her usual solitude. She couldn't stop thinking that these holidays were going to be different, although she still didn't know if it was good or bad.

As she watched the daily shows of the previous day and the programming of that day and beyond, she heard the sound of whatsap.

- Hi Evi. How's it going? We are enjoying a fantastic time. And the valley is beautiful in autumn. How about you? I'm sending pictures.

Virginia was still so passionate about Nature, using it as a mechanism to replace her lack of a partner, whom she was incessantly looking for, with less and less success.

After several photos of colourful leaves, rivers, mountains and bridges, a personal photo of Eva in a bathing suit unexpectedly appeared.

- Cool, huh? I took it from you in Cadaqués. Remember? Well favoured you are, you jerk.

It was true. On that occasion, the combination of light and posture had given rise to an unreliable image. For those who did not know her, she represented a woman 20 years younger than herself.

She could not spend much time inactive, only contemplating the idealized photo on her mobile phone.

- Why don't I put this picture in the chat room? That way it will be easier to know that whoever is on the other side is a real person - she said unsure.

Even though she had not been an adventurous girl throughout her life, this time she was. It was a different vacation, and she had decided to indulge everything. Hidden from her usual environment of friends, she was now a single woman determined to open the door to the world of sex with lonely strangers locked in a rectangular space.

Soon she was able to see her enlightened profile of the beautiful young woman she appeared to be, with the chosen age assigned to that image.

It didn't take long. Insistent beeps began to come to her. Immediately she turned the volume down, frightened at the thought of her niece hearing them. To her surprise there were already calls from interlocutors on the other side of the dating page. Behind the hello that seemed to be the usual beginning, the messages were full-blown attacks.

-How beautiful you are! How I wish I could have taken that picture of you in the summer! Shall we meet to see each other? - said number 1, and next to the message there appeared a bald and smiling head, which wanted to preserve his youth in vain.

- I'm interested in your profile. Send a naked photo - said number 2, without any image that could help to glimpse who the nudist lover was.

-You eat prick? said number 3 without any modesty. The photo that accompanied such a violation of any intimacy was a muscular body showing its virile attributes with an obvious provocative message, but the shot had no head.

She felt the same nervousness again that she had experienced the night before. She was being the victim of a very dangerous addition. She was going to be a voyeur for strangers and at the same time she was going to be an object of voyeurism for them.

She heard music and screams in the street. She got up from her chair and went out to the terrace. As she watched the brass band pass by with the big head and the children who were running away and chasing them, she thought of 3 people who were sharing her autism.

- A rejuvenated bald man. A freak who doesn't even dare to show his face. A vicious man living by and for morbidity. What a future I have!

But the process of attraction had taken hold of her. For the next few days, her life would be based on looking anxiously at a screen where her privacy wanted to be violated, not safely kept at all, making her desire beat in an environment of such obvious insecurity.

- Where are you? - Eva wrote to her first suitor, the one who had seemed less determined, but who she saw as a match for her.

It took a while for the message to be heard, but in the end there it was.

- In Centrovía.

- In Centrovía? - she said strangely, trying to locate the place she had heard of but never been to.

- Where is Centrovía?

- Near Zgza. Next to Plaza Imperial.

- Aren’t you off duty? It's Pilar fiestas.

- No, I work. I'm a truck driver.

There was a moment of silence, necessary for her, because as a regular civil servant she had never dealt with a truck driver in her entire life. She thought of the crazy race she'd signed up for. She was forgetting all the years she had spent, meeting people before deciding to love them. But virtual allowed to share and expand desire through a fine human link. In it, personal reality, both economic and social, had no relevance.

- See you on Skype? - was the next message that came into the computer, with no first question mark, which seemed to be common in the chat.

- No, I can't right now. I have to go shopping. Tonight.

Eva was suddenly in a hurry to organize her flat where she had to play the aunt.

- This afternoon. I'll only be here eight hours. Then I have to go.

- This afternoon at 4:00.

- OK. A kiss beauty.

- Goodbye.

With the illusion of her new extrasensory date in her mind, she set out to do her usual glamorous work, beginning with the purchase of plenty of food for her niece and possible guests. She knew that she was still on the familiar rice-macaroni-burger-pizza-potato--coke-ice cream youth diet, so the next few days wouldn't be too demanding for her.

When she had finished her routine household tasks her niece and companion finally got up. It was past noon. Immediately they ate voraciously everything the aunt put in front of them.

- And you didn't go out last night, Aunt?

- No, I was tired. I went to bed early.

- How boring! It was all packed! You call someone today, okay?

- Don't organize my life, little one, I'm old enough to know what I have to do.

- But you're not staying home again today, okay?

- I'll call someone. Let's see what you can tell me about you last night. And don't let it just be about clubs, drinks and hot guys.

As I suspected, the explanation of the girls, told with all the adolescent intensity, was an endless one. They had embarked on a continuous wandering through night bars, drinking and talking, until the fumes of alcohol and sleep redirected them to auntie's home.

When they had finished eating, the two young women got caught up in the world of silence. They read and wrote on their cell phones, organizing their second day of fiestas. So as not to upset Eva, they picked up the table, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and left again.

- But you're leaving? Don't you want some coffee?

- No, thank you, Auntie. We're leaving, the villagers are waiting for us at the fairs. Bye-bye.

- But you've got money?

- Yes, my father gave me. Bye-bye.

She was free and alone again. Her trucker fantasy had been going around in her head since she left the chat room. She poured herself a cup of coffee and watched the news. The wars of always organized by those of always and suffering those of ever. The gossip programs had dropped to low levels of quality. As she had not sat down to see them for days, she now didn’t manage to recognize some of the little people who were walking around the screen proclaiming their mental vulnerability.

She couldn't stop thinking about the apparent human closeness that floated universally on the airwaves and in which she could so easily participate. Without even finishing her coffee, she sat back down on the computer and entered the chat room.

More messages awaited her, some brief, others explicit in their bodily desire, and she was even sent some old-fashioned, romantic lover's message, which admired in rapt fascination her unreal image.

Eva thought about how easy it was to establish a virtual polyandry which the new technologies allowed. But she still maintained the rule of fidelity to the word given. She looked for her first choice and wrote to him.

- I'm already connected.

For a moment there was no answer. She thought she might be playing polygamy and might be talking to another woman. She reviewed other personal profiles of the list of men on the show, waiting for their princess of that day to call them, and she was amazed at the richness of expressions, the abundance of situations, the variety of desires that the human sexual instinct encompassed. She finally got the message from the truck driver.

- Hi.

- Waiting for a while.

- Nap time

- What's your name?

- Ismael. And yours?

- Virginia - she lied.

- Enter Skype and call Ismaelca.

Without being very sure of what she was doing, she opened the program and the webcam. When the camera finally transmitted the images from the other side, before her was a naked, excited man who looked at her with the glow of immediate desire. She was very impressed by the image, but did not close the program.

That night Eva recalled her virtual odyssey. Following the instructions of an expert cyber-fucker, she had given herself over to the most daring language ever used by her. Bathed in the security of her absolute freedom, she had reached orgasm feeling her cyber-partner explode on the other side as well. Chat was definitely a very powerful drug.

On the next day, each moment she spent alone was a complete immersion in the new world she had discovered. She thought she couldn't let herself be carried away by a pseudo-accompanied loneliness. What she had done left her so dissatisfied that she thought of erasing everything from her computer. But she didn't do it. If there were so many men looking for a partner, she had to find someone to share her time, her pleasure and her need for mental communication. She finally saw him.

On the screen she now had the man she had dreamed of all her life. He was about her age, with short hair and blue eyes, a calm smile of someone who feels sure of himself. He seemed to be saying, "Call me".

Before moving on, she checked his profile. His name was Exter, though she knew that names were of little use here. A strange message full of personal passion filled everything:

"I'm here to love you forever. Don't be afraid. Don't be insecure. Forget about your past failures and the fear of failure that guides your present life. I need you as much as you need me. With me, with you, together we will live eternal life of absolute happiness. Call me”

Never in her life, Eva had heard such melodious words that her heart beat with such impetuosity. It did not seem possible that a human being could say that in a vacuum, to anyone who read it.

- What is the trap behind this message? she asked herself.

After reading such a message, full of love and security, she could no longer discard that message as she had been doing with the others, full of hot chat procacities. And she wrote to him.

- I was impressed by your message. Who are you?

- Extra, your true lover.

- I don't know you. You don't know me either.

- I know you now, believe it or not. The lover's job is to love the beloved. When love is the only reason for life, all other problems disappear. And I love you. I'm going to love you forever. And you will love me forever.

- You overwhelm me, Extra. I'm not used to being talked to like that. It seems unreal. Are you a machine?

- No, kiss my lips and you'll see that I'm as alive as you are.

- Am I dreaming? Kissing a screen? This is crazy.

She backed off from her chair and started to think, why she didn't go out and meet real people, people who lived near her, who she could have adventures with sensibly, with the possibility that they would last. Exter was very attracted to her but she didn't want any more virtual sex. She thought about asking him out on a bar date. Then she heard it.

- Eva! Come on. I'm waiting for you.

- What? Where are you? How do you know my name? What do you want? Who are you?

With some fear she approached the screen. Extra's image glowed all over the monitor. It was a video image. It seemed to be seeing her, it seemed that his eyes were following her.... his smile was a magnet that directed her steps... she could not resist kissing him...

That kiss sucked up to the last of her cells, taking them to the other side of virtual reality, recomposing them into a new and astonished middle-aged woman who could not help but admire the world she had come to. It was in a silicon valley, dominated by its characteristic metallic grayish colour, where all the dreams that allowed to overcome human limitations had come true, to the point of forming a society of excellence generated by the most intelligent technologies, where the most stupid human generation that had created the planet lived pleasantly.

Eva disappeared forever from Zaragoza. No one else heard from her. In their family they were aware that she had spent a lot of time in a well-known hot date chat, but her friends were unable to provide any information. They didn't even know their friend was spending her time on it. No one was able to provide names of their last relationships. The dating company, under pressure from the police, pointed out that it had come into contact with their machine hook and contributed to the conversation it had started. It also pointed at the truck driver, married with two children, but, in addition to the conversation that was systematically recorded in the company, it gave them a story so clarifying that they had to discard him from the list of suspects.

The mystery remained unresolved and the matter has long since closed, in the face of the disbelief of Eva's office, police and environment.

But Eve lives her immense eternal happiness in the company of the alien she dared to kiss, in an unknown, trouble-free place. And she'll never come back.

TALE OF THE GYM SLAVE
La Ciotat (France)
November 2005

Carlos kept looking at Mediterranean Sea to relax his impulses, with the resemblance of existential nausea slipping down his lips. He was the only human being along the promenade of his small coastal town. Sunset had arrived, bringing to the trees of the walk successive waves of strong cold winds, which forced life inside the homes. Only some hasty car was passing through the street, getting lost in the distance. Then, silence.

The waves came to break on the shore, creating the relaxing daily rhythm of repeated noises over and over again. Each heartbeat of the sea was an impulse to his existential reflection.

- What am I doing here? - he said quietly.

He thought again of his mother, with whom he lived at the age of 36. She was a divorced teacher who had been laid out on a couch on retirement. There she was accompanied by an insistent talk of never-ending gossip programs that kept her in absolute silence and without provoking any reaction. Carlos had long since given up about accompanying her as a TV viewer. After fifteen minutes of listening to the gossip of empty characters, who were increasingly enriched by their insults and social nonsense, Carlos' sensitive state of mind was decaying to the point of absolute hatred for humanity. After his usual withdrawal to his room, which repeated day after day, he finally decided not to watch TV with his mother anymore. Their family life consisted of sharing an elegant but cold flat, where the voices from TV for the mother and the chill out music for the child coincided, although in separate rooms. Dinnertime, when they were both at home, was just over ten minutes to eat their usual pizza and ice cream accompanied by a couple of glasses of wine per head.

But this time his mother had gone on her extensive retirement holiday, usually to the Amalfi coast, and he was free at home. Free but bored, almost depressed. Something was missing in his life. Someone with whom he could feel his heart beating in parallel. He went through the many faces with which he had lived in one way or another. Although a few still shocked him, he thought he probably didn't know what love was yet.

He had plenty of company, they entertained him, almost adored him, but his short-lived companions considered him to be just a throwaway guy, and his feeling of loneliness remained and grew as he was spending his life in their provincial city.

For them, Carlos was a juicy topic of conversation when he appeared in the supermarket to buy his unsophisticated food. At 5.30 a.m. the coffee chat around a table at the middle-aged clients' bar usually focused on the body quality of their collective gigolo, before being given a lift to the family home and not seen each other until the next day.

- Look at him. He looks gourgeous in his jacket!

- This week, he's probably been at the gym.

- What shoulders, my god!

- What's going on? Who are you talking about? - the least adventurous woman in extra-marital matters said.

- Don't you see his athlete's body?

- That boy?

- His name is Carlos and he's very eager to give us pleasure, isn't he?

- Yes, of course he does," said his regular clients, amidst size-indicating hand movements, whispers and laughs.

- Haven’t you tried him?

- Me? I don't do that. I have a husband.

- You're stupid. Are you going to compare a farm chicken to a pheasant?

- I'm happy with him.

- You've got used to easy life, lack of emotion. Try this once and then we'll talk. If you decide to date him, I have his phone number. And it's only fifty euros, whole service.

- Please don't talk like that. It bothers me.

- You've been a nerd ever since we were in high school. You're missing out. I used to think so too. But I fell. And I don't regret it. What I was missing....!

And so Wednesday afternoons went by. After the incisive glances of the women on each centimetre of his anatomy, calls and datings, demanded with total discretion, would arrive, which were progressively increasing in frequency, so that these joyful married women of La Ciotat could continue to combine their extra-marital sexual encounters with work and family. Carlos had always admired his clients' ability to make his role of satisfaction go completely unnoticed in such a small town.

Carlos was spending his life between the daily punishment of bodybuilding in the gym and the hourly sex he so successfully offered at homes. But now, in front of the sea, next to no one, he was thinking about the meaning of what he was doing, what it might take, what the future might keep for him.

He felt the weariness of a dark day. His daily activity of punishing his muscles with the sophisticated torture machines that filled the space of gym, as job training for his job, became increasingly uninteresting to him. He'd been thinking about retiring for a while. While doing weights or cycling or walking on various machines he had already remembered his whole life from start to finish.

- Will I always be like this? Will I end up an old man with an impressive physique and an empty head?

He knew he had to keep his body resources stable and even improve them, as his clients detected any excess or defect that had arisen and did not hesitate to let him know. And he kept on and on running without moving, pushing machines for nothing over and over again, swimming laps and laps in the pool to always returning to the starting point. Action without imagination, without illusion, without satisfaction.

But now he had another reason to stay there day after day. It had been 7 years since his partner died, the most intense social experience of his life.

He stared into the void as he heard Mina's distant voice and laughter come from the past. And he remembered. He recalled that they met one night of partying as they listened to the emotional strength of Manu Chao's voice, covering an August night sky. The following week, Charles was already installed in the young woman's flat in the poorest part of Paris. For him it was an unexpected well-being to enjoy a beautiful young woman with ebony skin and stunning eyes. But it wasn't an exclusive love. Unwittingly, he became just another pimp in the neighbourhood, conscientiously organizing and tidying the flat and the food for both of them, based on the abundant income that his wife's unparalleled beauty brought to the home. These were years of shared happiness, of travels and adventures, of sensations of deep pleasure for two new young adults, until the final drift began in Amsterdam.

While at Noord's campsite, where they arrived on a free ferry, made available by the city to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, Mina began to dive into a nearby tent when drug was offered to her. Carlos couldn't stand the sight of the needles and that was his first big disagreement.

Heroin became part of their lives, in their completely conflicting attitudes. His life got worse when they returned to Paris. Mina under the effects of drugs began to accept unlimited clients, the relationship with Carlos, until then so well shared with her clients, was reduced to moments of fall into a drowsiness from which he could not get out but at the cost of more drugs. Finally Mina disappeared, moved to her pusher’s flat, where income flourished with the sale of drugs and sex. Carlos, for whom his life at the time had no other meaning than the attraction for Mina, went to rescue her to the nerve centre of Parisian drugs, to get nothing more than a great beating from the thugs who were the protectors of the business, from which he had to take time to recover. Sometimes he still felt the itching, perhaps psychological, in his humerus that was broken at the time.

He fled from there to take refuge in his city, to live off his mother's income, and that would remain his life for a long time, until that very day.

He'd never see Mina alive again. He knew that she had died and he went to the funeral to hear all the contempt that had come from the heart of her parents who had already lost their loved one a long time ago, pouring all the guilt on him and cursing the passive young man.

Since then he stopped approaching women and it was a long time before he allowed his body to be used again for the first time for money. It was one night at his mother's birthday party. A friend of hers practically raped him while they were both in a state of complete intoxication. It was not much more than satisfaction of the desire retained for too long with hardly any awareness of the other person, but it was the starting point of Carlos' life from then on. On the bedside table it was fifty euros notes. The unexpected companion of that night had set his fixed rate for the coming years.

He remembered his pre-teen years, harassed for being the teacher's son. With a daily frequency he was bullied a collectively by the future workers and husbands of La Ciotat, they told him all the insults they knew at their age, they beat him and stole his books and money. The situation became so stressful that he ended up hating school as a whole, hating it for the rest of his life, and refusing to go to class. A change of school meant a relative calm but learning and Carlos were completely divorced. Now when he made love with all his passion to so many women in the city, his greatest pleasure was to dream that it was a domination struggle that paid back to the horned husbands all the aggressiveness that had been inflicted on him in their student days.

Everything changed in his strenuous routine of gymnastics and sexual services when one day Aphrodite appeared. She stood next to him on the gym running machine and did not seem to notice his presence. But the sky opened up for Carlos. It was an improved Mina, more mature, with healthier features, a faint natural smile that shone while she was running, with a body to dream about, just his size.

Over the next few days and months, Carlos was punctually present at the date he had not been invited, and his eyes could no longer turn away from her. Unfortunately, on the second day of such platonic admiration, he was called to the gym office. The young woman had complained that Carlos was keeping his eyes on her and she had begged them to tell him that she was a married Muslim woman and that she did not want to be disturbed or even approached. Carlos was forced to forget his youthful illusion, but although he tried, he couldn't do it. He was in love. He continued to coincide whenever he could with the young woman's fixed schedule and sneaking in with eager looks when she didn't look there.

One Tuesday Aphrodite didn't show up. Carlos realised it immediately. The time that he now spent between levers and weights, which before used to pass quickly, became eternal. The automatic movements, which he used to make at the same time as her without any effort, were once again a boring and annoying workload. He looked at his growing muscles day by day, and knew that he had reached a level that was highly appealing for his clients, although he no longer had any illusions.

When three weeks passed without seeing his idealized queen, he knew that her absence was more than just a disease, his initial assumption. He asked the gym managers but no one knew anything. His interest in continuing to build more muscles in his body declined so much that he thought about quitting. Without her presence there, exercise was an ordeal.

When he least expected to solve the mystery, he saw her. She was dressed all in black. Yes, it was her. Was she in mourning?

A restrained feeling, the need to be close to her prompted him to speak.

-You're Aphrodite, right? What happened to you? Why don't you come to the gym?

She looked at him with a frightened face, seemed to be trying to protect herself from such unhealthy company by covering her face and quickly crossed the street without even looking at him.

- What happened to you? Are you going back to the gym?

Aphrodite's hasty steps were lost on the opposite sidewalk, without even turning her head.

- Poor. That's too bad. Becoming such a young widow - he heard a former client beside him said, accompanying her granddaughter home after school.

- Widowed? I didn't know anything. What happened to the husband?

- Those damn cars, getting bigger, getting faster....

- An accident?

- Yes, a tree collision. He was charred to death. It's a good thing he was alone. A tragedy. And she doesn't have anyone here anymore, poor girl.

- No, I didn't know that.

- How about you? Are you still working on the same thing?

- What? Yeah, I'm still the same as always.

- See if I can call you one of these days. I have a malfunction in the bathroom. I need a plumber.

- Well, all right.

Carlos also crossed the street without having hardly listened to the job offer that the old woman offered him.

- Widow? Is she not going to the gym anymore? -he said to himself.

Now more alone than ever, with the relaxing sea breeze blowing in pleasant humidity, he was thinking about her. What was the point of staying there with nothing for a 36-year-old man? It was throbbing for a widowed woman who didn't even want to see him while time passed, without any other illusion, without a project. The beloved face and sweaty eyes that occupied the whole of the firmament appeared again before him. He couldn't stand the image and came home.

As always, sitting on his mother's plaid sofa, beer, pizza and a bit of television.

The phone rang. It was his fuckbudy Beatrice, the only single girl in the city with whom he had found a certain sexual and personal affinity. She was the confidant of his problems and of his current troubled state, although until then she had had little success in convincing him to find an honest job.

- Hey, Carlos! Can you talk?

- Hi Beatrice. Yeah, I can always do it with you. How’s work?

- That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Don't you know who came to the travel agency today?

- Tell me.

- Your platonic love.

- Aphrodite? Is she going to travel?

- She' s leaving.

- What do you mean, she' s leaving? Where?

- She bought me a plane ticket for a flight in a week's time. Marseille-Asmara. She told me that she's fixed everything and that she's leaving with her family. Do you know that her husband was killed in an accident?

- Yeah, I know. Asmara? Where's that?

- The capital of Eritrea. Near the Red Sea.

To Carlos, this geographic information still didn't tell him anything, owing to his illiteracy caused by the years of school bullying. But then the idea came to him.

- Beatrice, are you there?

- Sure. What's the matter with you?

- I want another ticket. Next to hers.

- What do you say?

- Yes, I want you to book the ticket and order 2. I'll pay you for the other one.

- Are you going to Eritrea? Are you crazy?

- I don't have anything here. I'm into crazy things.

- You don't know what you're doing. You look like a kid. I’m certainly not going to that country.

- You take out that extra ticket, okay? Or shall I stop by?

- Come tomorrow. I haven't blocked the other one yet because I needed her passport.

- What time is Aphrodite going to the agency?

- She told me about 11 o'clock.

- I'll be there at 9:00, okay? I'll bring my passport and money. And if you want, I invite you for lunch and a nap.

- Very generous you are. Too bad you don't even want to travel to the Costa Brava with me.

- Another time I’ll do, I promise. Now I have to get everything ready, as in a week's time I'm going to the jungle.

- Jungle? Before you come take a good look at the city and the country you want to visit. Round trip ticket, right?